Week five is over, but midterms are still in full swing and making for a stressful week for us students. Being a senior, I’ve become accustomed to the challenge that midterms present, but I’d be lying if I said that they get easier with each term. They do not. Each round of midterms obviously varies widely in terms of difficulty, so I don’t think that anyone can say they get more or less difficult the farther into your college career you get. Rather, your tolerance level slowly builds up over time.

All that said, with exams comes stress. Students need something to counteract that stress, and luckily for us, we have one of the best holidays to fall back on to de-stress: Halloween. The spooky holiday is something I’ve never been a huge fan of, nor did I really appreciate it prior to becoming a college student. Like most people who grew up taking part in the holiday, I used to associate Halloween with getting all kinds of candy for free while dressing up as one of my favorite characters.

Halloween was without a doubt one of the best parts of freshman year for me because it was a night of nonstop festivities. I know that partying isn’t for everyone, but I think it’s important to maybe make an exception for Halloween. Trust me, I am nowhere near a huge party person, but Halloween parties are like nothing else.

I can’t emphasize how important it is to de-stress from midterms. The reason I’m making an argument for using Halloween as a catalyst to de-stress is because everyone needs something really powerful to knock out the anxious vibes. If it were just another week of stressful classes then putting on your pajamas, hopping into bed with a snack and binging Netflix would suffice, but this is midterms we’re talking about. These are the heavy hitters. They are arguably more painful than finals, so they require some special method to counteract. Halloween is that special method.

If you’re a freshman, you should definitely be making the most of Halloween. As you get to your later years of college, you’ll keep adding on more and more responsibilities, and with more responsibilities comes less time to have fun. Freshman year is when you have the most free time. It’s also the time when you’re still meeting many new people and making connections.

When I was living in Kelly Hall, I met a fair number of people during the first couple weeks of school, but Halloween completely changed everything because of the sheer amount of people that I met that night. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that we had a building-wide Halloween party, but it was pretty close to that effect. I can’t recall an experience after that one which comes to close to that level of social interaction. Having fun with all these new friends really saved me from the mental stress of midterms that quarter.

This was of course my experience, and I can’t say that everyone will celebrate Halloween to that level. The point is that the spooky nature of Halloween offers students an escape from midterm hell. While it may only be a temporary escape, midterms are also only a temporary period of heightened stress levels. Again, you may be timid about partying on Halloween, or even partying in a general sense, but I think it is definitely one of the best methods for easing stress levels as young adults, especially if you’re partying among friends.

It’s also important to remember that you may not even feel stressed, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t take part in some kind of activity that relieves stress. Sometimes we don’t even realize how stressed we are until the floodgates are right on the edge of bursting. By then, it can be difficult to gather the motivation to go out and destress because of how burnt out we already are.

At the end of the day, you have to make whatever decision you think is best for yourself. Because of this, I won’t go as far as to say that you must take advantage of the unique advantage that Halloween provides to de-stress, but you should find some sort of avenue to de-stress. That may be Halloween or it may be something else. Regardless, Halloween is the one time a year where you can really go all out with some wacky costume and not have to worry about people giving you weird looks on the street. Even if you’re not feeling all that stressed from midterms, Halloween is just a holiday that you should treat yourself to nonetheless.